I've lost the 1st (main) HDD on a 2 HDD system.
Tthe system has always been a MS configured system with an XP built MBR. All HDDs and I/O devices are IDE class.

Drive 1 - The main drive's MBR pointed to Partition 1 (a hidden parttiton) containing a samll Windows bootable backup partiton with the PC's boot.ini file for all bootable OS. Now that this drive1 is dead, theere is no valid MBR + boot.ini to get the system booted.

Drive 2 is a larger drive with freespace (enough to accommodate all of drive 1's partitions). And drive 2 has all of the running OSes in their own partitions here.

The way the system used to work before drive 1 crashed, today, is the system would boot, the boot.ini on drive 1-partition 1 would be invoked and the MS Boot Manager would display. If no selection was made, the system would proceed to boot a Windows which physically is on drive 2.

Here's my question as I think GRUB4DOS may be a blessing in this situation. Assuming I remove Drive 1 from the system.

Can I use GRUB4DOS, either via your CD or via a boot diskette to start the OS on the remaining system drive (drive2)?

Can I instruct GRUB4DOS to search the remaining drives for OSs? I know I can use a running QuickSEt to see the partitions by mounting drive2.

If I get QuickSet or GRUB4DOS diskette to get to the GRUB4DOS menu, can I hit esc, type "e" or "c" and enter a couple of commands to manually kick the system to boot? This assumes I know the partition number(s) I want to boot
.

Do you have an example somewhere?

All OSs on the HDDs in this system are XP class OSes.

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[*]Can I instruct GRUB4DOS to search the remaining drives for OSs? I know I can use a running QuickSEt to see the partitions by mounting drive2.

Then, you cannot mount or look inside the drive1 now, right?

If so, remove the drive 1 and set the drive 2 as the master.
Then run some live CD which contains the Grub4Dos (most of all Puppy 5.x).
Run the Grub4Dos config and reply 'OK' for all the dialog. That is all.

If you can mount the drive1 and look inside the partitions, there is a chance to rescue it with the LupQ-511 live CD or Wary-500m06.

wary_boot.png

Description

If you can mount the drive1 and look inside the partiton, the LupQ-511 live CD or Wary-500m05 may be able to boot up the Windows.

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3 Different Puppy Search Enginesor use DogPileLast edited by gcmartin on Wed 02 Feb 2011, 18:24; edited 2 times in total

If so, remove the drive 1 and set the drive 2 as the master. Then run some live CD which contains the Grub4Dos (most of all Puppy 5.x). Run the Grub4Dos config and reply 'OK' for all the dialog. That is all. ...

By doing this, it wil install GRUB$DOS onto the existing harddrive, Right? Why is there a need to do this if I just use the startup QuicSET LiveCD wiich has an operational running GRUB4DOS all ready when started. Is this a reasonalble approach or am I missing something?

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If so, remove the drive 1 and set the drive 2 as the master. Then run some live CD which contains the Grub4Dos (most of all Puppy 5.x). Run the Grub4Dos config and reply 'OK' for all the dialog. That is all. ...

By doing this, it wil install GRUB4DOS onto the existing harddrive, Right? Why is there a need to do this if I just use the startup QuicSET LiveCD wiich has an operational running GRUB4DOS all ready when started. Is this a reasonalble approach or am I missing something?

Why not install new gurub4dos on the new HDD? It must be easier.

Well, all the files which was on the damaged HDD is backed up on the new HDD?
If so, the Quickset Live CD can directly boot up the windows.

The new quickset, multilingual wary-500m06 Live CD can boot up also another OS if there used be installed any of grub(legacy, grub4dos or grub2).
But you get success only if the partition layout is the same as before. Otherwise, you need to edit the old menu.list.
Grub4Dos and grub2 can manage the partition UID's. If the old system was using the partition UID, using the old menu.list must fail because the partition UID must be different from the old ones.

It is quite interesting, seems sophiscated and so large (same as the original grub2 it self) that i do not follow up for now._________________Downloads for Puppy Linux http://shino.pos.to/linux/downloads.html

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